Super Sad Love Story Analysis

Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart, is told through the perspectives of two very dissimilar characters, Lenny and Eunice. Each tells the story in a unique way, Lenny in an old-fashioned diary entry, and Eunice on her GlobalTeens account. The contrast between Lenny’s archaic ways and Eunice’s futuristic technology is a driving theme throughout the novel that not only allows the reader to see events from opposing perspectives but also demonstrates the dumbing down of the masses by the government over generations. It additionally serves to remind the reader that although the novel takes place in the future, the events and ideas are nevertheless relevant today. Through the voices of Lenny and Eunice, Shteyngart gives the reader an idea …show more content…
Lenny has a hard time understanding Eunice and the way she thinks and talks, while Eunice has an equally hard time understanding Lenny and his old-fashioned, more intellectual choice of words and values. Eunice even talks in a completely different manner than Lenny. She often uses abbreviations like “TIMATOV. ROFLAARP. PRGV.” in conversation (22). Lenny later asks if ROFLAARP means “’Rolling On Floor Looking At Addictive Rodent Pornography’”, what (33)? Not only does Lenny have no idea what she’s talking about, but neither does the reader. Even though people today often us abbreviations when communicating over text, we don’t say them when we are talking to someone face to face. This is important because it highlight’s how Eunice’s generation differs from Lenny’s as well as our own and gives us a glimpse of how people may communicate in the future. Technology has shaped how humans communicate in the past; it would not be unusual to see this trend continue, impacting the language and dialects of future …show more content…
We see this when Lenny is reading to Eunice, and she struggles to understand the story and has difficulty reading. Lenny then says, “’Reading is difficult. People just aren’t meant to read anymore. We’re in a post-literate age. You know, a visual age.’” (277). This scene intensifies the contrast between Lenny and Eunice. Here we have a middle-aged man stuck in the past with his books, and a young girl caught up in the fascination of her generation with technological advancements. One of the first things we read from Eunice is a “GLOBALTEENS SUPER HINT” that blatantly says “Switch to Images today! Less words = more fun!!!” (27). They even go on to claim that “excessive typing makes wrists large and unattractive” and that to prevent this people should switch from communicating with words to communicating with images (44). These brief messages from GlobalTeens give the reader a look at the world Eunice is from and how her generation has been brought up. It’s no wonder Eunice and other members of her generation can’t read a book and use abbreviations when speaking, seeing as they’ve been taught by modern society that reading is boring and useless; why use words when you can just use a picture? Not only are they taught that writing is useless, but they are also told that it can be detrimental to their looks, giving them fat wrists. These hints highlight the impact technology has had and will

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Super Sad Love Story Analysis

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